Temporary and long term care of a patient generally requires that the patient be supported for the duration of the treatment. Currently available hospital beds are equipped with a number of complex mechanical and electrical subsystems which provide positioning, weight monitoring, and other functions related to patient's care. Despite their inherent complexity, these systems need to be easy to interact with and used by the caregiver. The ease of use and operation is of critical importance, particularly in emergency situations. Due to the complexity and required minimal downtime for these forms of beds, the status of such systems needs to be constantly monitored, which currently is performed by technicians in order to ensure desired functionality of the patient support is maintained. This form of monitoring and potentially diagnosis of problems with a patient support can be both time consuming and costly.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,897,780 to Ulrich, et al., entitled “Patient support Status Information System for Hospital Beds” discloses an information distribution system for a hospital, including a patient support having a signal generator for generating a first signal indicative of a condition of the patient support.
Therefore there is a need for a control and diagnostic system for integration into a multifunctional patient support that can overcome the identified problems in the prior art and provide the desired functionality with a reduced level of human intervention.
This background information is provided to reveal information believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present invention. No admission is necessarily intended, nor should be construed, that any of the preceding information constitutes prior art against the present invention.